Without disclosing the full extent of Jim's defection and desertion,
Clarence was able to truthfully assure the Hopkins family of his
personal safety, and to promise that he would continue his quest, and
send them further news of the absentee. He believed it would be found
that Jim had been called away on some important business, but that not
daring to leave his new shanty exposed and temptingly unprotected, he
had made a virtue of necessity by selling it to his neighbors, intending
to build a better house on its site after his return. Having comforted
Phoebe, and impulsively conceived further plans for restoring Jim to
her,--happily without any recurrence of his previous doubts as to his
own efficacy as a special Providence,--he returned to the rancho. If he
thought again of Jim's defection and Gilroy's warning, it was only to
strengthen himself to a clearer perception of his unselfish duty and
singleness of purpose. He would give up brooding, apply himself more
practically to the management of the property, carry out his plans
for the foundation of a Landlords' Protective League for the southern
counties, become a candidate for the Legislature, and, in brief, try
to fill Peyton's place in the county as he had at the rancho. He would
endeavor to become better acquainted with the half-breed laborers on
the estate and avoid the friction between them and the Americans; he was
conscious that he had not made that use of his early familiarity with
their ways and language which he might have done. If, occasionally, the
figure of the young Spaniard whom he had met on the lonely road obtruded
itself on him, it was always with the instinctive premonition that he
would meet him again, and the mystery of the sudden repulsion be in some
way explained. Thus Clarence! But the momentary impulse that had driven
him to Fair Plains, the eagerness to set his mind at rest regarding Susy
and her relatives, he had utterly forgotten.
Howbeit some of the energy and enthusiasm that he breathed into these
various essays made their impression. He succeeded in forming the
Landlords' League; under a commission suggested by him the straggling
boundaries of Robles and the adjacent claims were resurveyed, defined,
and mutually protected; even the lawless Gilroy, from extending an
amused toleration to the young administrator, grew to recognize and
accept him; the peons and vacqueros began to have faith in a man who
acknowledged them sufficiently to rebuild the ruined Mission Chapel on
the estate, and save them the long pilgrimage to Santa Inez on Sundays
and saints' days; the San Francisco priest imported from Clarence's
old college at San Jose, and an habitual guest at Clarence's hospitable
board, was grateful enough to fill his flock with loyalty to the young
padron.
He had returned from a long drive one afternoon, and had just thrown
himself into an easy-chair with the comfortable consciousness of a rest
fairly earned. The dull embers of a fire occasionally glowed in the
oven-like hearth, although the open casement of a window let in the
soft breath of the southwest trades. The angelus had just rung from the
restored chapel, and, mellowed by distance, seemed to Clarence to lend
that repose to the wind-swept landscape that it had always lacked.
Suddenly his quick ear detected the sound of wheels in the ruts of the
carriage way. Usually his visitors to the casa came on horseback, and
carts and wagons used only the lower road. As the sound approached
nearer, an odd fancy filled his heart with unaccountable pleasure. Could
it be Mrs. Peyton making an unexpected visit to the rancho? He held his
breath. The vehicle was now rolling on into the patio. The clatter of
hoofs and a halt were followed by the accents of women's voices. One
seemed familiar. He rose quickly, as light footsteps ran along the
corridor, and then the door opened impetuously to the laughing face of
Susy!
He came towards her hastily, yet with only the simple impulse of
astonishment. He had no thought of kissing her, but as he approached,
she threw her charming head archly to one side, with a mischievous
knitting of her brows and a significant gesture towards the passage,
that indicated the proximity of a stranger and the possibility of
interruption.
“Hush! Mrs. McClosky's here,” she whispered.
“Mrs. McClosky?” repeated Clarence vaguely.
“Yes, of course,” impatiently. “My Aunt Jane. Silly! We just cut away
down here to surprise you. Aunty's never seen the place, and here was a
good chance.”
“And your mother--Mrs. Peyton? Has she--does she?”--stammered Clarence.
“Has she--does she?” mimicked Susy, with increasing impatience. “Why, of
course she DOESN'T know anything about it. She thinks I'm visiting Mary
Rogers at Oakland. And I am--AFTERWARDS,” she laughed. “I just wrote to
Aunt Jane to meet me at Alameda, and we took the stage to Santa Inez
and drove on here in a buggy. Wasn't it real fun? Tell me, Clarence! You
don't say anything! Tell me--wasn't it real fun?”
This was all so like her old, childlike, charming, irresponsible self,
that Clarence, troubled and bewildered as he was, took her hands and
drew her like a child towards him.
“Of course,” she went on, yet stopping to smell a rosebud in his
buttonhole, “I have a perfect right to come to my own home, goodness
knows! and if I bring my own aunt, a married woman, with me,--although,”
loftily, “there may be a young unmarried gentleman alone there,--still I
fail to see any impropriety in it!”
He was still holding her; but in that instant her manner had completely
changed again; the old Susy seemed to have slipped away and evaded him,
and he was retaining only a conscious actress in his arms.
“Release me, Mr. Brant, please,” she said, with a languid affected
glance behind her; “we are not alone.”
Then, as the rustling of a skirt sounded nearer in the passage, she
seemed to change back to her old self once more, and with a lightning
flash of significance whispered,--
“She knows everything!”
To add to Clarence's confusion, the woman who entered cast a quick
glance of playful meaning on the separating youthful pair. She was an
ineffective blonde with a certain beauty that seemed to be gradually
succumbing to the ravages of paint and powder rather than years;
her dress appeared to have suffered from an equally unwise excess of
ornamentation and trimming, and she gave the general impression of
having been intended for exhibition in almost any other light than the
one in which she happened to be. There were two or three mud-stains
on the laces of her sleeve and underskirt that were obtrusively
incongruous. Her voice, which had, however, a ring of honest intention
in it, was somewhat over-strained, and evidently had not yet adjusted
itself to the low-ceilinged, conventual-like building.
“There, children, don't mind me! I know I'm not on in this scene, but I
got nervous waiting there, in what you call the 'salon,' with only those
Greaser servants staring round me in a circle, like a regular chorus.
My! but it's anteek here--regular anteek--Spanish.” Then, with a glance
at Clarence, “So this is Clarence Brant,--your Clarence? Interduce me,
Susy.”
In his confusion of indignation, pain, and even a certain conception of
the grim ludicrousness of the situation, Clarence grasped despairingly
at the single sentence of Susy's. “In my own home.” Surely, at least, it
was HER OWN HOME, and as he was only the business agent of her adopted
mother, he had no right to dictate to her under what circumstances
she should return to it, or whom she should introduce there. In her
independence and caprice Susy might easily have gone elsewhere with this
astounding relative, and would Mrs. Peyton like it better? Clinging to
this idea, his instinct of hospitality asserted itself. He welcomed Mrs.
McClosky with nervous effusion:--
“I am only Mrs. Peyton's major domo here, but any guest of her
DAUGHTER'S is welcome.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. McClosky, with ostentatious archness, “I reckon Susy
and I understand your position here, and you've got a good berth of it.
But we won't trouble you much on Mrs. Peyton's account, will we, Susy?
And now she and me will just take a look around the shanty,--it is real
old Spanish anteek, ain't it?--and sorter take stock of it, and you
young folks will have to tear yourselves apart for a while, and play
propriety before me. You've got to be on your good behavior while
I'm here, I can tell you! I'm a heavy old 'doo-anna.' Ain't I, Susy?
School-ma'ms and mother superiors ain't in the game with ME for
discipline.”
She threw her arms around the young girl's waist and drew her towards
her affectionately, an action that slightly precipitated some powder
upon the black dress of her niece. Susy glanced mischievously at
Clarence, but withdrew her eyes presently to let them rest with
unmistakable appreciation and admiration on her relative. A pang shot
through Clarence's breast. He had never seen her look in that way at
Mrs. Peyton. Yet here was this stranger, provincial, overdressed, and
extravagant, whose vulgarity was only made tolerable through her good
humor, who had awakened that interest which the refined Mrs. Peyton had
never yet been able to touch. As Mrs. McClosky swept out of the room
with Susy he turned away with a sinking heart.
Yet it was necessary that the Spanish house servants should not suspect
this treason to their mistress, and Clarence stopped their childish
curiosity about the stranger with a careless and easy acceptance of
Susy's sudden visit in the light of an ordinary occurrence, and with a
familiarity towards Mrs. McClosky which became the more distasteful to
him in proportion as he saw that it was evidently agreeable to her. But,
easily responsive, she became speedily confidential. Without a single
question from himself, or a contributing remark from Susy, in half an
hour she had told him her whole history. How, as Jane Silsbee, an elder
sister of Susy's mother, she had early eloped from the paternal home
in Kansas with McClosky, a strolling actor. How she had married him
and gone on the stage under his stage name, effectively preventing any
recognition by her family. How, coming to California, where her husband
had become manager of the theatre at Sacramento, she was indignant to
find that her only surviving relation, a sister-in-law, living in the
same place, had for a money consideration given up all claim to the
orphaned Susy, and how she had resolved to find out “if the poor child
was happy.” How she succeeded in finding out that she was not happy.
How she wrote to her, and even met her secretly at San Francisco and
Oakland, and how she had undertaken this journey partly for “a lark,”
and partly to see Clarence and the property. There was no doubt of the
speaker's sincerity; with this outrageous candor there was an equal
obliviousness of any indelicacy in her conduct towards Mrs. Peyton that
seemed hopeless. Yet he must talk plainly to her; he must say to her
what he could not say to Susy; upon HER Mrs. Peyton's happiness--he
believed he was thinking of Susy's also--depended. He must take the
first opportunity of speaking to her alone.
That opportunity came sooner than he had expected. After dinner, Mrs.
McClosky turned to Susy, and playfully telling her that she had “to talk
business” with Mr. Brant, bade her go to the salon and await her. When
the young girl left the room, she looked at Clarence, and, with that
assumption of curtness with which coarse but kindly natures believe they
overcome the difficulty of delicate subjects, said abruptly:--
“Well, young man, now what's all this between you and Susy? I'm looking
after her interests--same as if she was my own girl. If you've got
anything to say, now's your time. And don't you shilly-shally too long
over it, either, for you might as well know that a girl like that can
have her pick and choice, and be beholden to no one; and when she don't
care to choose, there's me and my husband ready to do for her all the
same. We mightn't be able to do the anteek Spanish Squire, but we've got
our own line of business, and it's a comfortable one.”
To have this said to him under the roof of Mrs. Peyton, from whom, in
his sensitiveness, he had thus far jealously guarded his own secret, was
even more than Clarence's gentleness could stand, and fixed his wavering
resolution.
“I don't think we quite understand each other, Mrs. McClosky,” he said
coldly, but with glittering eyes. “I have certainly something to say to
you; if it is not on a subject as pleasant as the one you propose,
it is, nevertheless, one that I think you and I are more competent to
discuss together.”
Then, with quiet but unrelenting directness, he pointed out to her that
Susy was a legally adopted daughter of Mrs. Peyton, and, as a minor,
utterly under her control; that Mrs. Peyton had no knowledge of any
opposing relatives; and that Susy had not only concealed the fact from
her, but that he was satisfied that Mrs. Peyton did not even know of
Susy's discontent and alienation; that she had tenderly and carefully
brought up the helpless orphan as her own child, and even if she had not
gained her affection was at least entitled to her obedience and respect;
that while Susy's girlish caprice and inexperience excused HER
conduct, Mrs. Peyton and her friends would have a right to expect more
consideration from a person of Mrs. McClosky's maturer judgment. That
for these reasons, and as the friend of Mrs. Peyton, whom he could alone
recognize as Susy's guardian and the arbiter of her affections, he must
decline to discuss the young girl with any reference to himself or his
own intentions.
An unmistakable flush asserted itself under the lady's powder.
“Suit yourself, young man, suit yourself,” she said, with equally direct
resentment and antagonism; “only mebbee you'll let me tell you that
Jim McClosky ain't no fool, and mebbee knows what lawyers think of an
arrangement with a sister-in-law that leaves a real sister out! Mebbee
that's a 'Sister's title' you ain't thought of, Mr. Brant! And mebbee
you'll find out that your chance o' gettin' Mrs. Peyton's consent ain't
as safe to gamble on as you reckon it is. And mebbee, what's more to the
purpose, if you DID get it, it might not be just the trump card to fetch
Susy with! And to wind up, Mr. Brant, when you DO have to come down to
the bed-rock and me and Jim McClosky, you may find out that him and me
have discovered a better match for Susy than the son of old Ham Brant,
who is trying to play the Spanish grandee off his father's money on a
couple of women. And we mayn't have to go far to do it--or to get THE
REAL THING, Mr. Brant!”
Too heartsick and disgusted to even notice the slur upon himself or the
import of her last words, Clarence only rose and bowed as she jumped up
from the table. But as she reached the door he said, half appealingly:--
“Whatever are your other intentions, Mrs. McClosky, as we are both
Susy's guests, I beg you will say nothing of this to her while we are
here, and particularly that you will not allow her to think for a moment
that I have discussed MY relations to her with anybody.”
She flung herself out of the door without a reply; but on entering the
dark low-ceilinged drawing-room she was surprised to find that Susy was
not there. She was consequently obliged to return to the veranda, where
Clarence had withdrawn, and to somewhat ostentatiously demand of the
servants that Susy should be sent to her room at once. But the young
girl was not in her own room, and was apparently nowhere to be found.
Clarence, who had now fully determined as a last resource to make a
direct appeal to Susy herself, listened to this fruitless search with
some concern. She could not have gone out in the rain, which was again
falling. She might be hiding somewhere to avoid a recurrence of the
scene she had perhaps partly overheard. He turned into the corridor
that led to Mrs. Peyton's boudoir. As he knew that it was locked, he was
surprised to see by the dim light of the hanging lamp that a duplicate
key to the one in his desk was in the lock. It must be Susy's, and the
young girl had probably taken refuge there. He knocked gently. There was
a rustle in the room and the sound of a chair being moved, but no reply.
Impelled by a sudden instinct he opened the door, and was met by a cool
current of air from some open window. At the same moment the figure of
Susy approached him from the semi-darkness of the interior.
“I did not know you were here,” said Clarence, much relieved, he knew
not why, “but I am glad, for I wanted to speak with you alone for a few
moments.”
She did not reply, but he drew a match from his pocket and lit the two
candles which he knew stood on the table. The wick of one was still
warm, as if it had been recently extinguished. As the light slowly
radiated, he could see that she was regarding him with an air of
affected unconcern, but a somewhat heightened color. It was like her,
and not inconsistent with his idea that she had come there to avoid an
after scene with Mrs. McClosky or himself, or perhaps both. The room was
not disarranged in any way. The window that was opened was the casement
of the deep embrasured one in the rear wall, and the light curtain
before it still swayed occasionally in the night wind.
“I'm afraid I had a row with your aunt, Susy,” he began lightly, in his
old familiar way; “but I had to tell her I didn't think her conduct to
Mrs. Peyton was exactly the square thing towards one who had been as
devoted to you as she has been.”
“Oh, for goodness' sake, don't go over all that again,” said Susy
impatiently. “I've had enough of it.”
Clarence flashed, but recovered himself.
“Then you overheard what I said, and know what I think,” he said calmly.
“I knew it BEFORE,” said the young girl, with a slight supercilious toss
of the head, and yet a certain abstraction of manner as she went to the
window and closed it. “Anybody could see it! I know you always wanted
me to stay here with Mrs. Peyton, and be coddled and monitored and
catechised and shut up away from any one, until YOU had been coddled and
monitored and catechised by somebody else sufficiently to suit her
ideas of your being a fit husband for me. I told aunty it was no use our
coming here to--to”--
“To do what?” asked Clarence.
“To put some spirit into you,” said the young girl, turning upon him
sharply; “to keep you from being tied to that woman's apron-strings. To
keep her from making a slave of you as she would of me. But it is of
no use. Mary Rogers was right when she said you had no wish to please
anybody but Mrs. Peyton, and no eyes for anybody but her. And if it
hadn't been too ridiculous, considering her age and yours, she'd say you
were dead in love with her.”
For an instant Clarence felt the blood rush to his face and then sink
away, leaving him pale and cold. The room, which had seemed to
whirl around him, and then fade away, returned with appalling
distinctness,--the distinctness of memory,--and a vision of the first
day that he had seen Mrs. Peyton sitting there, as he seemed to see her
now. For the first time there flashed upon him the conviction that the
young girl had spoken the truth, and had brusquely brushed the veil from
his foolish eyes. He WAS in love with Mrs. Peyton! That was what his
doubts and hesitation regarding Susy meant. That alone was the source,
secret, and limit of his vague ambition.
But with the conviction came a singular calm. In the last few moments
he seemed to have grown older, to have loosed the bonds of old
companionship with Susy, and the later impression she had given him of
her mature knowledge, and moved on far beyond her years and experience.
And it was with an authority that was half paternal, and in a voice he
himself scarcely recognized, that he said:--
“If I did not know you were prejudiced by a foolish and indiscreet
woman, I should believe that you were trying to insult me as you have
your adopted mother, and would save you the pain of doing both in HER
house by leaving it now and forever. But because I believe you are
controlled against your best instinct by that woman, I shall remain
here with you to frustrate her as best I can, or until I am able to lay
everything before Mrs. Peyton except the foolish speech you have just
made.”
The young girl laughed. “Why not THAT one too, while you're about it?
See what she'll say.”
“I shall tell her,” continued Clarence calmly, “only what YOU yourself
have made it necessary for me to tell her to save you from folly and
disgrace, and only enough to spare her the mortification of hearing it
first from her own servants.”
“Hearing WHAT from her own servants? What do you mean? How dare you?”
demanded the young girl sharply.
She was quite real in her anxiety now, although her attitude of virtuous
indignation struck him as being like all her emotional expression,
namely, acting.
“I mean that the servants know of your correspondence with Mrs.
McClosky, and that she claims to be your aunt,” returned Clarence. “They
know that you confided to Pepita. They believe that either Mrs. McClosky
or you have seen”--
He had stopped suddenly. He was about to say that the servants
(particularly Incarnacion) knew that Pedro had boasted of having met
Susy, when, for the first time, the tremendous significance of what he
had hitherto considered as merely an idle falsehood flashed upon him.
“Seen whom?” repeated Susy in a higher voice, impatiently stamping her
foot.
Clarence looked at her, and in her excited, questioning face saw a
confirmation of his still half-formed suspicions. In his own abrupt
pause and knitted eyebrows she must have read his thoughts also. Their
eyes met. Her violet pupils dilated, trembled, and then quickly shifted
as she suddenly stiffened into an attitude of scornful indifference,
almost grotesque in its unreality. His eyes slowly turned to the window,
the door, the candles on the table and the chair before it, and then
came back to her face again. Then he drew a deep breath.
“I give no heed to the idle gossip of servants, Susy,” he said slowly.
“I have no belief that you have ever contemplated anything worse than an
act of girlish folly, or the gratification of a passing caprice. Neither
do I want to appeal to you or frighten you, but I must tell you now,
that I know certain facts that might make such a simple act of folly
monstrous, inconceivable in YOU, and almost accessory to a crime! I can
tell you no more. But so satisfied am I of such a possibility, that I
shall not scruple to take any means--the strongest--to prevent even
the remotest chance of it. Your aunt has been looking for you; you had
better go to her now. I will close the room and lock the door. Meantime,
I should advise you not to sit so near an open window with a candle at
night in this locality. Even if it might not be dangerous for you, it
might be fatal to the foolish creatures it might attract.”
He took the key from the door as he held it open for her to pass out.
She uttered a shrill little laugh, like a nervous, mischievous child,
and, slipping out of her previous artificial attitude as if it had been
a mantle, ran out of the room.